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Discipline with the step child

Melissamaybe's picture

Ugh step parenting. Why did I get myself into this lol. A couple nights ago I brought up to my husband that we need to start disciplining his son a lot more. 

His son, yss, is two and a half and only comes to our hours Monday Wednesday from 3:30 to 7:30 and every other weekend Friday through Monday morning. His parenting plan grants him more time every two months. So we are getting more and more until it is fifty fifty. His mother is an awful person. She loves at home with her parents and her other son oss. Oss is also my husbands son. Her parents take care of oss a majority of the time because she didn’t want to be a mom and still doesn’t. She doesn’t work, and just plays all day while she has her mommy and daddy pay for everything and gets everything handed to her on top of her outrageous amount of child support my husband provides her. I was friends with her for a couple months in high school and soon realized she was spoiled and conceited and it disgusted me so we didn’t remain friends. She’s 26 and literally is still a child. Anyway, her parents never discipline her and I’m 100% positive they don’t discipline their grandson oss, either. He has been coming over to our house for almost a year now and I can tell he is not discipline. He throws his dinner on the floor and my husband never does anything about it. And when I tell him we need to get on him about that he says “oss don’t throw your food on the floor” in a very kind voice. Obviously it hasn’t worked because it’s been a year and he’s still doing it. He thinks he’s an angel.

My nephew will come over every now and then and oss will be all shy and scared of him when everyone is watching but when you turn your back he throws and hits my nephew and his brother. He’s a brat. Husband tells him it’s not okay to hit and if he does it again he’ll go in timeout but he never actually follows throw with the time outs. We had a talk the other night about how I think he needs to be more strict with him and discipline him more. Raising his voice, timeouts, etc. and he seemed hesitant to agree but did. He said he doesn’t like the idea of discipline because he’s afraid that during pickups with his mom that he won’t want to come over to our place and will cry when he tries to take him because he’s discipline. He’s afraid his mother will take him to court and show that he doesn’t want to be with us and that she will take all of my husbands time. That will never happen and I’m annoyed he says that.

We had him all weekend last week and he kept saying “stop it Melissa” to me. I looked at my husband and he said we should ignore it and he’ll stop. We ignored it and it got to the point he was saying it every minute of the day and got worse and worse. I told him to do something about it and his excuse was “we can’t start now. We already ignored it this long we will start tomorrow” tomorrow comes and he gently tell him not to say that and he still does.

He calls me stupid and dumb and my husband let’s him get away with it. After our conversation about needing to discipline him more he comes over for dinner the next day and starts throwing his food on the floor. Says nothing. I step in and tell him that’s not okay and he needs to quit. He won’t eat his dinner but wants the biscuitsts I made. I told him he shouldn’t give him the biscuit until he eats his dinner. Meanwhile his feet are on the table and he’s tipping in his chair hitting the wall behind him. He ends up just giving him the biscuit because he won’t eat dinner. I told the kid to get his feet off my table and stop leaning in his chair and he looks at me and says stop it and then proceeds to hit. He missed my arm but regardless my husband just sat there and didn’t do anything about it. I looked at him and said “so you aren’t going to do anything?” And he said Melissa I just don’t know where and when to start discipline. Are you kidding me?!? Start now before this kid turns into a raging kid who gets his way with everything. That’s how his mother is I can guarantee that is how he will turn out.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve reached my limit with his bs. I want us both to discipline him because I will without a doubt discipline my eight month old when he’s old enough to understand and I don’t want oss getting off the hook while my son is yelled at for everything he does wrong. Because one day he will notice and I don’t want him to feel like we’re hardeer on him. I need input I don’t know what to do. I’m so angry with my husband. He’s is going to regret not disciplining him. His kid will run him if he’s not careful. Help. 

ndc's picture

If your husband has said he doesn't know where and when to start discipline, I would do two things.  First, I would tell him to take parenting classes and read parenting books.  And in the meantime, I would offer to *show* him how to discipline, and insist that he back you up.  This might be you telling the child to do or not do something and your husband immediately saying the same thing, or it might be you telling your husband what to do and him doing it.  Unfortunately, it sounds like you are already telling him what to do and he's ignoring you.  As a last resort, you can make his life very miserable if he refuses to get his son under control.  Make it more difficult for him to NOT discipline than it is for him to discipline his son.

Remind him that he is doing his son a huge disservice by NOT forcing him to behave like a polite, respectful, civilized child.

fourbrats's picture

your child aged three months in 14 days and your former "best friend" and your husband's ex is now only a friend of a few months in high school LMAO. And where is your husband's second child with this woman?

Lavender88's picture

You married your "best friends" baby Daddy, but you were only friends for a few months in high school. You and he have a 5 year old together, but he has a 2 year old to her? The same 2 year old that is suspected of having autism?

Am I reading all of this right or?

TrueNorth77's picture

On her last post she did add a comment that she put 5year old instead of 5 month old, accidentally. But still, that was only 2 weeks ago, and now the baby is 8 months?

Also, I'm confused too, in this post you said you were only friends with BM for a few months in high school, but in your last post you said she was your former Best friend, and the past few years she hasn't been a very good friend. It's confusing. Also, you're 32 and she is 26- how old is your DH? How were you friends in high school when there is a 6 year age gap?

 

Bex_S's picture

My DH is like that. He agrees on how his brat should be disciplined and is on the same page as me regarding what behaviour is acceptable and what is not. But when the time comes to do it, he pussies out and makes me look like the evil step mother to SD because I pulled her up on her behaviour. I talk to DH about it later, and he agrees on what SD did wrong, but he just won't discipline her in the moment. So now SD doesn't respect my authority at all; she just glares at me. And when DH does occasionally discipline her, she screams and cries like a beaten dog because, I don't know, you've told her to stop picking her nose or something. It's fucking ridiculous. We're not overly strict, we just expect a basic level of human behaviour. But apparently telling her to wash her hands and use her cutlery makes us arsehole parents.